Something has been bothering me for some time since moving to PipeWire on my Linux boxes, and that is the way multichannel audio devices are handled. As we all know (and loath), Linux audio is complicated and terrible, but the upshot is that it gives us a lot of control and the possibility of extremely low latency — critical to realtime audio recording, processing, programming, etc.
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I just posted my second SuperCollider FM Synthesis project to GitHub, a pedagogical extension of a great DX7 “clone” for the SuperCollider language. The project allows users to enter DX7 presets, by number, and generate usable SynthDefs (SuperCollider synthesis instrument definitions) and analysis that provides insight into the nature of the instrument configuration. My previous…
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Imaging a University lab is fun and profitable! Learn how!
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I’m not just an emissary for Linux Audio, like everyone else who relies on it and extols its (few) virtues, I’m also its biggest detractor. So when you read “a flawless linux audio experience” you might think I’m trolling you, and in the distant past (say several months ago) you would definitely be correct. But…
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This is a quick post to talk about my recent experience configuring Pipewire and JACK on Arch Linux. Now, I’m not an Arch adherent and maybe you aren’t either. That’s fine because I’ll talk about the minimal install and the packages that are required to get Pipewire and JACK working. This will not cover moving…
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In this post I will attempt to convince you, dear friend, to take the hard way and learn to do whatever new/onerous thing you need to learn in order to facilitate your work, rather than relying on someone else to do it for you.
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Part 1: Hosing Down your Computers In an earlier post about setting up and maintaining a Linux audio lab I wrote: Above I mentioned that cron-apt is used to check package status (daily) and use the email packages to email package status to the system admin (me). This, however, is not configured to auto update…
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In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series I introduced Linux as a viable operating system for a university music and audio programming lab and described in some detail Linux audio configuration for low-latency audio applications. In this part I will walk through *most* of our post-install script in some detail so you have a better picture of the necessary configuration required. But first…
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“Running a Linux Audio Lab was fun, he said! You should try it, he said! He didn’t say anything about ALSA and JACK and Pulseaudio! Aaaaaah!” -Horrified individual the first time they try to get low-latency audio working in Linux with an Ubuntu base. To be clear, in Part I of this series I never…
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This is part one of a three-part series of articles describing how and why you can use Linux in your college or university’s music/audio lab. In this article I will provide a broad overview of what I do in the CS music/audio lab at Yale and why I do it.
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